DaytonDailyNews.com

COLUMBUS — Democrat Richard Cordray, Ohio's state treasurer, has won the race for Ohio attorney general.

Republicans seeking to capitalize on a scandal in the office earlier this year faced long odds of victory against a Democrat better known and better funded than GOP contender Mike Crites, a former U.S. attorney.

Cordray built on a campaign fund left over from his 2006 run to raise a total of $2.5 million in the truncated contest, made necessary by the resignation in May of Democrat Marc Dann.

Dann was forced out of office by fellow Democrats after seeing top aides implicated in a sexual harassment scandal and admitting to an affair with an employee. He had won election in 2006 as part of the party's near sweep of statewide offices long held by Republicans.

Crites, a former U.S. attorney for southern Ohio, wooed voters with a tough-on-corruption message and a TV ad campaign painting Cordray as another career politician in the mold of Dann. He has raised $159,000.

Independent candidate Robert Owens, 35, a Delaware lawyer, also sought to exploit the scandal as he offered voters a choice without ties to a major political party.

Cordray, 49, campaigned largely as a front-runner, dismissing even the most serious of Crites' attacks as byproducts of the "silly season."

Yet Crites, 60, hammered away at Cordray's response to the scandal, his management of the treasury and his receipt of a $10,000 donation from the stepdaughter of a Columbus-based salesman for Wachovia Securities two weeks after he took office in 2007. Wachovia reportedly saw an increase in its role managing the state's bond trading after the donation.

Cordray returned the donation and said he had never traded state business for campaign donations.

Crites proposed initiatives to clean up the office and boost morale after the Dann scandal deflated many on the staff, including asking lawmakers to establish a statewide commission to prosecute allegations of felony-level corruption in public office.

Cordray pledged to focus the office's attention on the Wall Street crisis by holding accountable any rating agencies, investment banks or lenders that played a role. He said he would attack the consumer debt epidemic by taking action against credit card companies that make false promises, particularly to college students.

A lawyer with an economics degree, Cordray previously was Franklin County treasurer, state solicitor and a state representative.

Crites, now a managing partner at a private law firm, gained attention as U.S. attorney for his prosecution of Cincinnati Reds baseball great Pete Rose for tax evasion.